Lowell Ganz told The Hollywood Reporter that he wrote a script for A League of Their Own prequel that never made it to production. The film’s screenwriter and original film actresses Geena Davis and Lori Petty were all interviewed for the film’s 30th anniversary.
The second film would have centered on the baseball career of Jimmy Dugan, the team manager played by Tom Hanks. However, Columbia would not agree as the film would not include the female cast. Ganz felt there was not much more of a story left to explore with those characters. Ganz, director Penny Marshall, and fellow screenwriter Babaloo Mandel could not think of a storyline including those characters, and the film “fell through.”
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“We actually wanted to do a prequel sequel — we wanted to do a movie about Jimmy,” Ganz said. “It was going to talk about his career before he got involved with the women’s baseball league, and then it would sort of skip over that, and the last act was going to be his career afterward, where he got a job managing a men’s baseball team and actually did a favor for an older Black player that he had met in the prequel part, to give him one last shot. This would be a year or two after Jackie Robinson. Tom was interested, and we couldn’t get Columbia to say yes to it.”
Following the release of A League of Their Own, Ganz went on to work on Greedy, Forget Paris, and Multiplicity, among others.
The Original Film and Upcoming Reboot
After Penny Marshall watched a PBS documentary about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in 1987, she sent the documentary to Ganz. The two had previously worked on Laverne and Shirley together, where Marshall starred as Laverne. Ganz was the show’s co-creator, writer and producer as well as a baseball fan. Ganz and Mandel collaborated on a script, and Marshall went on to direct after signing with Sony Pictures.
The original film starred Davis as Rockford Peaches catcher Dottie Hinson; Petty as Dottie’s younger sister, Kit; Hanks as Dugan; teammates included Madonna, Rosie O’Donnell and Anne Ramsay. The film was a success both for commercial audiences (bringing in $132.4 million worldwide) and critics.
A new A League of Their Own series is making its way to Amazon Prime, premiering August 12, starring Abbi Jacobson, Chanté Adams, D’Arcy Carden and Nick Offerman. Ganz also discussed the upcoming reboot, saying:
“I’m not speaking from a place of resentment. I’m just speaking from a place of, I doubt that I will watch it because it will feel too strange to me. I can’t imagine that I will enjoy the experience. I didn’t watch the Parenthood series either, and I’m sure it was very good because everybody said it was very good. But [to me,] those characters are mine.”
Davis and Petty both shared enthusiasm about the upcoming reboot, with Davis saying she “can’t wait” and Petty saying she hopes the series is a “huge hit.”
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